Stochastic Improvement of Cyclic Railway Timetables

Leo Kroon, Rommert Dekker, Gábor Maróti, Mathijn Jan Retel Helmrich and Michiel Vromans

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Real-time railway operations are subject to stochastic disturbances. However, a railway timetable is a deterministic plan. Thus a timetable should be designed in such a way that it can cope with the stochastic disturbances as well as possible. For that purpose, a timetable usually contains time supplements in several process times and buffer times between pairs of consecutive trains. This paper describes a Stochastic Optimization Model that can be used to allocate the time supplements and the buffer times in a given timetable in such a way that the timetable becomes maximally robust against stochastic disturbances. The Stochastic Optimization Model was tested on several instances of NS Reizigers, the main operator of passenger trains in the Netherlands. Moreover, a timetable that was computed by the model was operated in practice in a timetable experiment on the so-called “Zaanlijn”. The results show that the average delays of trains can often be reduced significantly by applying relatively small modifications to a given timetable.

Keywords: Railway Timetabling; Robustness; Stochastic Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 M R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12-20
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Stochastic improvement of cyclic railway timetables (2008)
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